Vettel dismisses gearbox penalty threat

Sebastian Vettel says he does not expect to face a gearbox penalty, despite a problem ruling him out of the final part of running during practice for the Austrian Grand Prix.

Having stopped on track early in the first session, Vettel recovered to clock the quickest time in the second session, before he had to abandon his long run after only a few laps due to a malfunctioning gearbox.

"No," he said when asked if he was fearing a penalty. "We had an issue with the gearbox, some of the sensors switched into alert mode.

"Obviously now we’ll have to take a close look at it: we don’t know what’s the problem yet, but it seems to be unrelated to the one we had this morning. It’s always better if it happens in free practice rather than in qualifying or in the race, but we have to look into it and make sure it’s not happening again."

Despite setting the best time across the two sessions, Vettel was left to rue his comparative lack of running.

"In terms of feeling with the track, the lap is short and you just need to get into the rhythm," he said.

"Unfortunately we didn’t get as many laps as we wanted, but that’s what it is. Overall the pace looks fine, we’ve taken a lot of information from this session, which is good.

"We know that we have a good car and we think we are competitive, let’s see what’s happening overnight."